Bob Glaser

While a lot of schools are starting to turn out students with degrees in User Experience, many of us came to it though other (usually related) fields.

This was my path

I grew up in a house with a father who was both a scientist (chemical engineering, mining engineering, and lab research) and lover of the arts. His connection with the arts came in diverse areas: painting, music, and to a lesser extent, film. Every moment of his life was seen through the context of the scientific observation as well as aesthetic appreciation. I picked up on this and found it something to emulate. Even when I was very young, my father answered my questions as if I were an adult. If I didn’t understand, then he would simplify it. I even remember having a conversation with him about what makes a good scientist. His response included such things as the scientific method, that there were many unknowns, that a good scientist tries to prove theories wrong, not right. Never to assume that a fact can be applied to an example in a way that ‘fits really well’ but not exactly and then presume that the result is correct. Be honest but skeptical in practicing science. – Read More –

I have discovered that I may have lost work to more dazzling portfolios. This concerns me, but not at the potential loss of work. It concerns me because the people hiring UX designers are often looking for “rock-star” portfolios. I won’t even get into the fact that “rock-star” implies to me: ego that exceeds talent, focus on the irrelevant or unimportant areas of strength, and the idea that being great at one thing presumes that talent automatically spills into another area (particularly one that seems unrelated or tangential at best.) The focus has become more about visual, marketing and sales impact at the cost of a good user experience. – Read More –

Here is an issue that pokes at me on a daily basis. It is the philosophical aspects that describe, in a colloquial way, the reason that specific UX decisions are made. While we get our data from observation, testing and heuristic analysis, and add to that aesthetic elements that are hopefully appropriate to the user and not too biased towards the designer, we often are not given the proper opportunity to explain the philosophy behind those decisions. So, how do I go about including the philosophy of UX in my UX presentations, designs and strategies? – Read More –